Recent content by rachelwillow

My girls were in the front yard this afternoon and a little rat terrier (half the size of my chicken) from across the street got loose and attacked one of my hens. I didn't see it, I heard the girls cluck clucking like something was wrong and ran outside, the little dog was running away and my...

Thank you! I think the layer is just 16%. I do feed lots of kitchen scraps, and my kids generally don't eat all their eggs in the morning so the hens get a little egg pretty often. I've been giving them a can of cat food periodically during this molt. I think I will go get some mealworms today...

Actually other than not having feathers she looks fine. Her comb is still bright red, too. I'm in southern Oregon, it's been in the mid to high 40s during the day, and right now at 7:30 pm it's 37. I'm thinking it gets down to the low 30s, but at the moment it's not even freezing every night...

My best layer is going through a very hard molt. This is the first time my chickens have had such a bad molt, last year it was partial and went quickly. Sunny seems to be in bad shape, she hardly has any feathers at all, her pin feathers are barely out. She's walking like she's drunk, kind of...

PS she is a speckled Sussex...I know she is prone to broodiness, is she maybe also prone to strange behavior?

I have a hen who is such a troublemaker. She was recently broody, probably a month ago. Now she is sleeping in the nesting box. She poops in there too, my eggs are getting really nasty! She is not in there during the day, she is definitely not broody anymore (besides she doesn't poop in there...

Ok. We don't have a rooster, but I could probably find some fertile eggs for her. Hmmm.

I have five girls, all different breeds. They are all good layers and I get 4-5 eggs a day. My Speckled Sussex, named Susie, is at the bottom of the pecking order and is often shooed away by the others at feeding time. She is kind of a loner and often hangs out on her own. This past weekend we...

I don't do anything. If there is lots of dried poop on one I may scrape it off with my fingernail. I figure we cook the eggs thoroughly.

Thanks, that is really helpful. Yes, they have me trained! I managed to keep them in all day yesterday, gave them a couple of heads of lettuce that were not going to be eaten by humans, and they ended up gobbling them both down this morning. The kids and I cut some grass into little pieces and...

My poor ladies are super bummed about having to stay in their pen nearly all the time now. They used to roam around our yard for at least 2-3 hours a day, sometimes longer. They have started venturing further out and have had a couple encounters with loose dogs running across the creek to get...

When my hens went through their first molt it was kind of a mini-molt....a few only lost feathers on their necks. I couldn't figure out what was going on until the others began to molt a little more obviously. How old is she? Could it be her first molt? Mine were about 9-10 months when they did...

It's the Purina Mills coop, with vents between the top of the wall and the roof. The sensor I put in there is on the floor (just laid it in the corner the other day) so I'm wondering if there is less moisture up high. I've recently changed out the wood shavings so it seems pretty dry in there...

OK thanks! I feel much better now.

Wow -20! That is COLD. Mine are less than a year old, they will be one in February. So they will be ok. The humidity in the coop last night was about 79%, is that too damp? I have a couple of windows I could open but they were built to give good airflow in our super hot summers, so may add a...